From South to North: epistemic transfers, policy agendas and cultural inscriptions in Brazil

• In Event: Multiple modernities from the South to the North: history of the present, cultural differences and social pathologies.

Proposal

A considerable body of literature in the field of comparative studies has focused on mechanisms related to policy transfer and borrowing, showing how knowledge and standards promoted by international organizations circulate, but also the role of intermediary actors in their translation and hybridization into national and local contexts. This transfer has often been observed from the perspective of North countries, and through specific epistemic and methodological assumptions about the benefits of digitalization. This contribution focuses on the Brazilian politics and policy of globalization from a local and multicultural world, where digitalizing education is mixed with traditional, patrimonial and conservative movements that also count in the globalizing process. Hybrid knowledge is produced between tradition and modernity, and it is largely influenced in Brazil by cultural theories in implementing policy agendas. Therefore, policy travelling can be analyzed from the perspective of diverse social and material assemblages or entanglements, highlighting the plurality of cultural, political and moral inscriptions throughout digitalization and globalization. This contribution also highlights different epistemic and political cultures in the way communities, networks and institutions accommodate this global circulation of knowledge and standards, while bringing them to life in places and events that institutionalize differences in human experiences and relationalities.

References

Clementino, A. M., & Oliveira, D. A. (2023). Tensions and contradictions in the education policies of Lula and Dilma Rousseff administrations: learning from the lessons of the past. Práxis Educativa, 18.
Oliveira, D. A. (2022). The teaching profession in Brazil. The Status of the Teaching Profession: Interactions Between Historical and New Forms of Segmentation.
Oliveira, D. A., & Carvalho, L. M. (2020). Performance-based accountability in Brazil: Trends of diversification and integration. In World Yearbook of Education 2021 (pp. 179-195). Routledge.

Author

• Dalila Andrade Oliveira, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais